A power outage in Buenos Aires left hundreds of thousands of customers without electricity, stopped traffic lights and stranded subway passengers for the second time in 24 hours during the summer heat, the Associated Press reported.
The outage began yesterday at 12:40 p.m. (local time – 17:40 Bulgarian time) with a sudden power line failure and affected more than 622,000 customers just hours after workers restored service after another outage early this morning, the Ministry of Energy said.
The power outage came after a heat wave increased electricity consumption and strained the city's power supply, said “Edesur“, an electric company in Argentina that serves parts of Buenos Aires and its suburbs. They said technicians had been dispatched to restore power.
Municipal authorities said the outage had halted metro service on all lines in both directions and blacked out 50 traffic lights, causing chaos in the central and southern parts of the capital, requiring the deployment of hundreds of traffic police.
Later in the afternoon, traffic was restored on all but two lines, the operator of the capital's metro said. Police rescued people temporarily trapped in elevators.
Power outages are relatively common in Argentina, especially during peak consumption periods, such as the height of the hot summer months in the southern hemisphere.
Years of effectively frozen electricity prices under previous left-wing governments have led to a lack of investment in the electricity sector.
But utility prices have soared under libertarian President Javier Milley, who is also courting foreign investors to finance major energy infrastructure projects.